Refreshing the whine glass.

Some comments – both direct and offlist – tell me that some people didn’t understand my dissatisfaction with spirit and its effect. Let’s run some numbers and then do a bit of what-if.

My main – currently a 70 shadow-priest with pre-Kara gear – has 199 spirit. For math simplification, allow me to round it to 200 and present it as an example of ‘what the lower levels can set as goal.’

Let’s do a wild but similar comparison. Without equipment a warrior gets around 322 strength at level 70. How hard would warriors — or ANYONE for that matter — look for additional strength if a level 50 craftable (but expendable) good, say a potion, gave +46 dps? (322 str for a warrior is 644 AP, divided by 14 is 46 dps.) But that’s not fair – after all, strength only applies to warriors. OK, let’s pick on a common aspect of agility.

Pre-gear, a level 70 rogue can have an AGI of 175. At 2 points of armor per AGI that’s +350 armor — for a nominal level 50 equivalent. (Elixir of Greater Defense, +250, requires level 29. Just for another point of comparison.)

Again, the basic issue is that the stat is completely immaterial to other classes – and the only reason it’s material AT ALL to the priest is because sometimes we can get a bit of one of the two pools recovered in mid-fight. And the single largest reason it’s immaterial is that there are multiple resources that, at extremely low levels, overwhelm what the stat does.

Let me close, again, by pointing out this is a whine. The game is reasonably balanced. “Fixing” spirit would of necessity introduce imbalances – possibly game-breaking imbalances, certainly radical modifications in game-play.

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2 Responses to “Refreshing the whine glass.”

I rerolled a priest from a mage. She’s only at lvl 30 so take what I say knowing that I have not seen the full potential of this class on my own. I have friends that know…but it’s not the same.

I don’t think I would “Fix” spirit for all classes as you put it because that sounds like sweeping changes that can go wrong. I don’t think that everyone needs to worry about spirit as much and I hear that its harder to dance around the 5 second rule later on…but if I could make a change I would change the priest talent Meditation. Currently is 15% mana regen from spirit while casting. Priests are built around spirit and there seems to be some difficulty with long fights later. To make spirit worth more to the priests again and keep the classes unique why not make a small change and up that from 15% to 20%. It doesn’t sound like a lot but I think it would be enough to make a difference while not being overpowered. I haven’t done the math or anything and I just kind of threw out the 20% number. Maybe the correct number should be 25%…I don’t know, but I do think a small increase in that talent could solve a lot of problems.

Everyone worries (some) about Agility and Stamina. Strength is critical to warriors (+2 AP, applies to block), extremely important to Druids, Shaman and Paladins (+2 AP), and important to rogues and hunters (+1 AP, melee only). Int is critical to all spellcasters for their manapool. All the boosters out there for all of these are supplemental to the gain of improving a stat (that is, they improve rating, and rating needs several points to improve an effect as much as a point in a stat will do.)

But spirit? Spirit’s only “important” to healpriests (Not shadowpriests), and only while they can do the five second waltz. And all the boosters leave improvements to the stat itself in the dust.

And to add insult to injury, there is a critical combat factor – resistance – that is solely dependent on gear. (Resiliance is like spell hit prob which is related to weapon skill — while not stat dependent it’s at least tied to level before gear effects are applied. Resistance is purely a matter of gear.)

Yes, you’re right it’d be a sweeping change. That’s why it’s a “if the game were redone” or “back in time” change. But it irks me nonetheless – a stat is, basically, unimportant.

About…

I've experience with many priests of many races and specs on several servers. The more I play, the more I realize how much I do not yet know. This is a share of some of what I have learned.
My main these days is Zingiber on the Undermine server.